A report in the Times today about the riots in France said this: Magid Tabouri, 29, leader of a group of youth workers at Bondy, next to Aulnay, said he was suprised that the eruption had taken so long. “It has been simmering with all the exclusion, mistreatment and social misery and collapsed education,” he […]

Yup, it’s negative karma all round, today. I promise my next post will be a glowingly positive comment about something. An article in the Times explains how a government-commissioned report on CBBC (the BBC’s children’s TV channel), as well as criticising the “crass” presentation, “tastelessness and cruelty” of some programmes also criticised the frequent use […]

I’ve just been trying to avoid the temptation to stir up an edit war at Wikipedia. The ‘tea’ article mentions the fact that the word ‘tea’ is sometimes used for herbal infusions other than those made from the tea plant, before stating that the article is about teas made from tea. This was what one […]

An eggcorn. Joseph Massey, when he commented on my comments on the New Sincerity, titled the post ‘Nevermind the bullocks, here comes The New Sincerity.’ Which I assumed was a cattle-related joke of some obscure kind, since the Sex Pistols album is in fact Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols. ‘Bollocks’ is slang […]

Languagehat led me to discover Morfablog. I have no idea what any of it is about, but several of the pictures on the front page feature waterproof clothing, which chimes with my experience of Wales. It reminded me of being at university in Bristol and listening to Radio Cymru. Since Welsh takes quite a lot […]

The Language Log points towards this article in the LA Times which lists some food-related expressions in French, and gives some English examples as well. My own favourites: the English expression ‘fine words butter no parsnips’, and from Peasants into Frenchmen ‘pigs and moneylenders – you never know how much they’re worth until they’re dead’.